


Yes, But...

by skulls_and_stripes



Category: BoJack Horseman
Genre: Gen, Sexual Harassment, Statutory Rape, Trauma, bojack is fucked up and evil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27271456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skulls_and_stripes/pseuds/skulls_and_stripes
Summary: Penny struggles to process what happened on the boat.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	Yes, But...

Your name is Penny Carson, and you honestly don’t get what the big deal is.

You’ve  _ never  _ seen your mother like this.  _ Never.  _ You’ve seen her  _ angry  _ your fair share of times, because of  _ course  _ she gets pissed off sometimes when dealing with a rebellious teen and a bratty preteen boy, and you’ve even seen the urgent mix of fear and anger that accompanies Trip’s complete lack of road safety, the almost animalistic  _ hiss  _ of telling him to move out of the way as she grabs the back of his shirt to pull him back from running out of a car and the lecture about the importance of looking both ways that follows.

What you  _ haven’t  _ seen is the way she completely  _ freezes  _ in the doorway, or the way BoJack’s hands become stiff on your shoulders and back. His body is shielding you from view, like a barrier, and you have to strain your neck to look over his shoulder to see what your mother is  _ doing,  _ to see how long it’ll be until she closes the door and you collectively decide to pretend she never walked in, like all the times Trip forgot to close the bathroom door while he was pissing and you unknowingly walked in. Because, she’s  _ going  _ to close the door, and you’re  _ going  _ to collectively decide to pretend she never walked in. You’re  _ sure  _ of that.

But, part of you knows otherwise. The look of pure  _ shock  _ and  _ horror  _ and  _ disgust  _ and  _ fury  _ on your mother’s face as she freezes in the doorway like a deer in the headlights seems to indicate that something is  _ very very wrong,  _ and the way BoJack’s frozen up like he’s been caught committing a crime seems to indicate that something is even  _ more  _ wrong.

But, he’s  _ not  _ committing a crime. You’re seventeen. You’re old enough to consent, and you’re sober, and you’re not sure he is but he’s not  _ drunk  _ either, just his usual amount of  _ not-sober _ that you’re  _ sure  _ doesn’t affect his ability to consent. Legally speaking, he’s doing nothing wrong. And, sure, there’s that little voice in the back of your head that has to question whether he’s doing something wrong  _ ethically  _ speaking, that has to ask the questions like  _ what does a fully grown adult even want with a teen like you  _ and  _ what’s so bad about him that women closer to his age don’t want him,  _ but you  _ ignore  _ that voice, because you’re  _ mature,  _ and you  _ know  _ what you’re getting into.

That doesn’t stop your mother from sending you to your room. Neither does the rapid string of defenses from you and excuses from BoJack that you subsequently begin, about how it  _ looks  _ bad but it’s completely consensual. She just points toward the house, and you silently skulk inside. On your way in, you can just  _ barely  _ hear her telling him off, promising that she’s going to  _ fucking kill him,  _ and it takes every ounce of self-control you have to not storm back onto the boat and tell her that it’s not  _ like  _ that, that she’s making him out to be a predator when it was  _ you  _ who suggested it. You’ll save that for the argument that’s bound to follow.

You go to the bathroom to brush your teeth before bed. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, and you look yourself dead in the eye and say that  _ you have to fix this.  _ Because, you  _ do.  _ You can’t let an innocent man’s reputation, not to mention his friendship with Charlotte, be  _ ruined  _ because she walked in at a bad time and was too grossed out to hear that you consented. Because you  _ did  _ consent.

While you’re brushing your teeth, your mother walks in. She seems less angry, but she’s still grimacing, still has that look in her eyes like you’re a delicate piece of glass that she’ll break if she’s not careful. She puts a hand on your shoulder. (You flinch. The last person to touch your shoulder was BoJack.) “We’ll talk about this in the morning, okay?”

You nod, silently and obediently. You  _ will  _ talk about this in the morning. You’ll talk about how BoJack was  _ not  _ in the wrong, because you  _ gave consent. _

Your name is Penny Carson, and you  _ are  _ old enough to consent, even to a man nearly three times your age.

* * *

Your name is Penny Carson, and you absolutely cannot  _ believe  _ what you just did.

What you just  _ almost  _ did. The only thing that stops each frantic breath from catching in your throat as a sob is the reminder that you  _ didn’t actually do anything.  _ You can’t for the life of you figure out  _ why  _ it’s so important that  _ nothing happened,  _ because if anything  _ had  _ happened then that wouldn’t have been  _ bad,  _ would it? You  _ are  _ seventeen, after all, so you  _ can  _ consent. And, therefore, there is  _ no reason  _ that you should be wary of an adult in his fifties that wants to have sex with you.

The reasons why it was a  _ terrible idea  _ haven’t  _ quite  _ made themselves clear in your mind yet, and so you’re left with a series of instinctual alarm bells and no way to explain  _ why  _ you’re so  _ freaked out.  _ The closest thing to a justification you can find, for the way your heart is  _ pounding,  _ is the complete and utter  _ absence  _ of reasons why it  _ wasn’t  _ a terrible idea.

Because, you  _ can’t  _ see a reason. You look at yourself with the front camera of your phone, because if you turned the light on to use a mirror then everyone else in the house would immediately know you were awake, and you can’t find a  _ single  _ attractive feature in yourself. You can’t even find a single attractive feature in  _ him.  _

That little voice in the back of your head, the one that keeps pointing out that  _ it isn’t normal for a fully grown adult to be attracted to you  _ only to be ignored by the much larger part of your brain that doesn’t want to admit that, is now saying that you’ve  _ heard  _ about this. About men,  _ famous  _ men, who have young and impressionable fans who will just do  _ anything  _ for the approval of their favourite celebrity, who are more than willing to take advantage of that.

But that isn’t  _ your  _ story. You wouldn’t even  _ know  _ BoJack was famous if you hadn’t been told by your mother. There was no desperation for  _ him,  _ specifically. You don’t even think you were attracted to him, specifically -- he was just  _ there,  _ and you were lonely, and you feel so  _ pathetic  _ when you think about the fact that  _ that  _ was all it took.

It’s positively  _ scary  _ when the thought occurs to you -- that maybe this wasn’t the typical  _ rich actor takes advantage of young girl’s naivety,  _ but something  _ worse.  _ That maybe you’re already scarred and jaded and ruined beyond measure, and it was  _ that  _ that BoJack took advantage of. You quickly shake the thought away. If anyone was being taken advantage of, it’s  _ BoJack --  _ BoJack who is exactly the same as you if not  _ more  _ childish, BoJack whose friendship with your mother is  _ ruined  _ because of  _ your  _ decision, BoJack who now has to live the rest of his life with having almost  _ slept with a minor  _ on his conscience. 

You glance at the clock in the corner of your phone screen. It’s a little after three in the morning. Your name is Penny Carson, and you’re pretty sure you’re not getting any sleep tonight.

* * *

Your name is Penny Carson, and you’ve got a splitting headache.

You thought you were making a  _ good  _ decision when you decided not to drink anything last night -- you were okay to drive, and you were sober enough to consent, and you planned to  _ not  _ wake up with your head pounding. You might not be  _ literally  _ hungover, but sleep deprivation is a hell of a drug, and you’re sure as hell feeling the effects. 

You’re not sure if the physical or emotional pain is worse.

You check your phone, and find a text from Maddy’s mother, assuring you that she’s okay. It takes you a moment to actually remember  _ why  _ you need reassurance that Maddy’s okay. The events of the later part of the night had made it scarily easy to just  _ forget  _ that your best friend got alcohol poisoning. You don’t bother responding.

Your headache starts to ease up after you swallow down an Advil that tastes like the huge dollop of hand sanitizer that you rubbed into your hands before touching it. You can’t believe you just  _ touched  _ BoJack last night, and never thought to wash your hands afterwards. You feel  _ disgusting. _

It’s as you’re sitting down at the table for breakfast that your mother runs her fingers through your tuft of hair. “Let’s talk.” She says it in a tone that makes it clear that she’s not  _ angry,  _ at least not at you, but this isn’t a  _ casual  _ talk, either. She sits down opposite you, and looks at you with that piercing  _ mother  _ look, and says, “I’m not upset with you about what happened last night.” 

You stiffen. “You  _ sound  _ upset.”

“It was …  _ upsetting.”  _ She clears her throat. “Let’s be honest -- last night was a  _ mess.  _ But none of that was your fault.”

You cross your arms stubbornly.  _ Not this bullshit again.  _ If you had the choice, you’d be grounded a thousand times over instead of being treated like you’re responsible for precisely  _ none  _ of the stupid bullshit that  _ you  _ cause, because you’re  _ too young  _ to understand  _ anything.  _ “Did Maddy’s mom call you?”

“No, but Peter did. Maddy’s okay. Peter … seems upset.” She takes a sip from her cup of coffee and frowns. “Now, do you know who was  _ supposed  _ to be responsible for making sure Maddy was safe last night?”

“Peter,” you say automatically. “He’s her boyfriend. And…” You look down guiltily. “And, me.” You don’t  _ say  _ that you failed her, but you certainly think it very loudly. 

When you manage to look back up at your mother, her frown is deeper. “So, it should have been the two of you who took responsibility for keeping her safe?”

“Yeah.” It feels like a loaded question, but you can’t figure out what the trap is, so you answer as honestly as you can.

She sighs. “Who gave you the alcohol?”

You immediately stiffen. You’re half asleep, and you’ve been on the verge of asking if there’s more coffee in the kitchen for several seconds, but the question is its own form of caffeine. You sit up straight. “We already had vodka before BoJack agreed to come with us.”

“Aha.” It’s the same  _ aha  _ that she gave you halfway through a long lecture you got at some point in the third grade, when the school called your parents after you threw a tantrum over some kids making fun of you and the best defense you could think of was to lie and pretend no such thing ever happened and  _ hope  _ at some point she chose to believe you over your teachers. The  _ aha  _ came when she was around halfway through explaining the recount of the incident that Ms Chambers gave, and you angrily responded that Ms Chambers wasn’t even there at the time. It took you several seconds to realise how you’d just so completely lost the argument.

This time, it doesn’t take you half as long to find an explanation for her smugness. Underage drinking is illegal, and it’s also against her own personal house rules, and you’ve done the  _ wrong thing  _ by drinking. You actually have to resist the urge to  _ grin  _ about that. It’s oddly satisfying, and oddly  _ powerful.  _ Even if she’ll stupidly insist that your responsibility for keeping your friends safe was absolved just because an adult happened to be nearby, even if she’ll spin some narrative about BoJack taking advantage of you, you’re  _ going  _ to get in trouble for breaking that rule.

But, she doesn’t tell you you’re grounded. She doesn’t even demand to know where you got the vodka from in the first place. Instead, she says calmly, “So when did you start drinking?”

She doesn’t  _ tell  _ you to be honest, but somehow you feel that you might as well be -- you’re already sure you’re in trouble. “The  _ first  _ time was when I was fifteen,” you answer cautiously, stirring your cereal. “Ray-Ray’s parents gave her a little bit of beer in her coke. She let me have a sip. I don’t even know if it was enough to get me drunk. But I didn’t start  _ really  _ drinking until I became best friends with Maddy.”

“Hmm,” says your mother. “When you say  _ really drinking,  _ you mean --”

“Oh, not, like,  _ shitfaced  _ drunk. We’d just go out to the park sometimes on Friday nights with a few of Maddy’s friends and share a bottle. I was never drunk enough to slur, but I think I got a little tipsy.”

Her eyes widen. “So  _ that’s  _ why you kept getting headaches on Saturdays.”

“Yeah. At one point I thought you were onto me, so I stole food colouring from the kitchen to fake my period.”

“I  _ thought  _ something was up with that. That stain was  _ obviously  _ not real blood. It was bright red even after it dried.” She stirs her coffee, even though it’s already pretty well mixed. “So, it sounds like you and Maddy were pretty responsible drinkers.”

You frown. “You’re not mad?”

“I shouldn’t have been so strict. I’d prefer for you to do it at home so I know you’re safe.  _ But,  _ you and your friends were being as safe as teenagers can be -- you never drank  _ too  _ much, and you had plans for the next morning, even if sometimes the plans were stealing food colouring from your dad.”

You stare at her, tilting your head to one side.

“It  _ sounds,”  _ she continues, slowly and carefully. “Like, if BoJack had left you to your own devices, without interfering with your alcohol intake, you would have been  _ fine.” _

You flinch slightly. You honestly hadn’t thought of that  _ once  _ during all the times the events of the night replayed in your mind. “He said it would make us sick, though,” you say defensively. “Red Bull and vodka. He said it was too much sugar.”

“Don’t listen to Bojack!” You flinch. “Look, do -- do you know how sometimes adults just don’t  _ get  _ things?”

It  _ feels  _ like a loaded question, but you nod anyway. “Yeah.”

“And how, you  _ know  _ they’ve been through all of the same shit you’ve been through, but it doesn’t  _ feel  _ like they  _ get  _ it, at all?”

“You have  _ not  _ been through all the same shit I’ve been through.” You cross your arms stubbornly. “Things have  _ changed,  _ mom. Things are  _ totally  _ different to when you were in high school.”

She pauses, frowning deeply. “Things have definitely changed,” she says carefully. “But, do you think it’s possible that some things  _ haven’t  _ changed, and I’ve just forgotten how they were?”

“Yeah, probably. It was a long time ago.”

“I don’t think it’s really about  _ time,  _ so much as…” She sighs. “Look, you won’t get it yet.”   
“Of  _ course  _ I won’t,” you snap. “I’m too  _ young  _ to get  _ anything.” _

“Let me finish,” she says firmly. “When you grow up, you get more mature, and all this high school drama just feels like -- like  _ high school drama.  _ You can barely remember it, and it becomes totally inconsequential, and you just laugh at yourself for caring so much about it. But sometimes that makes it easy to forget that you  _ really  _ cared about it, and the pain you felt was real even if you don’t feel it now.” She places a hand on her heart. “And I made that mistake with you, and I’m sorry for that.”

You’re almost taken off guard by the genuine attempt at an apology.  _ Almost.  _ By the genuine  _ attempt.  _ “Yeah, you’re  _ totally  _ forgiven,” you snap. “It’s  _ fine  _ that you’re an annoying super-bitch,  _ all the time,  _ because  _ actually  _ none of my problems matter and in twenty years I won’t give a shit. Ugh!” You stand up. Your chair’s legs screen along the floor. You storm out of the room. 

You hear your mother stand up behind you. “Penelope!” The lack of a Carson attached to the end indicates that she isn’t at a boiling point of rage, but the fact that she’s using your given name is unusual in itself. You storm into the kitchen. She’s right behind you.

“I’m just getting coffee!” you say defensively.

“Don’t storm out of the room like that. Look, I--” She sighs. “I’m sorry. I got off topic. What I was  _ trying  _ to say, is -- sometimes BoJack might not have made the best decisions last night, because he doesn’t remember what it was like to be your age.”

You raise an eyebrow at her challengingly as you pour yourself a cup of coffee. “Such as?”

“He probably hasn’t been consistently sober for the last  _ forty years.  _ Do you think he knows how to be safe when you’ve just  _ started  _ drinking?”

Your coffee overflows onto the bench. You don’t notice until it pours over onto your arm that’s resting on the bench. You quickly stop pouring, and sheepishly wipe up the bench with a nearby cloth, but then you notice how  _ dirty  _ your hands are, and quickly start washing them at the sink.

“BoJack was responsible for making your drinking dangerous in the first place,” says your mother slowly. “If you can’t agree that he should have taken responsibility for Maddy’s safety just because he was an adult, can’t you agree that he should take responsibility for making sure the situation  _ he caused  _ stays under control?”

“...Yeah. Yeah, I can.” You take a gulp of too-hot coffee and clear your throat. “Well, yeah, he didn’t handle the Maddy thing great. He’s only human. Everyone makes mistakes.”

Your mother frowns. “...Yes. BoJack made some mistakes.” She clears her throat. “So, about the boat--”

You throw up your hands in frustration. “The age of consent in New Mexico is 17.  _ And,  _ I was sober. It was  _ fine!” _

“The fact that you have to  _ prove  _ that it was consensual just makes me more worried.” She sighs. “Look, I understand that --”

“No. Shut up! You don’t understand  _ anything!”  _ You start to pace erratically. “You don’t understand  _ anything.  _ You think everything I do is just because I’m some  _ stupid kid,  _ and that I couldn’t  _ possibly  _ consent to  _ anything.  _ But I  _ do  _ know what sex is! I know all about condoms, and consent, and foreplay, and --”

You stop, mid-sentence. Your father is walking into the room, wearing an apron that he’s still tying into a knot behind his back as he walks in. He grabs a wooden spoon and grins. “I thought we might make a cake to celebrate that  _ nothing  _ had gone horribly wrong in your prom last night!” He starts to pile ingredients onto a bench, frowning when he opens the cupboard. “Does anyone know where the red food colouring is?”

You stomp down onto the floor. “I  _ hate  _ you!” You push past him to access the cupboard. “Why do you  _ care,  _ anyway? Just use a different colour!” You grab the blue food colouring, and halfway through your hand’s planned route to slam it onto the bench you’re overcome by an urge to  _ destroy  _ something, so you throw it onto the floor. “I want to  _ die!  _ Fuck you all!” You storm off.

You spend most of the day holed up in your room with a splitting headache. There’s blue food colouring all over your shoes, and you go through a whole bottle of hand sanitizer between your attempts to the stain out and your attempts to remove BoJack’s sweat and fur and  _ filth  _ from your hands. Around noon you go out to a nearby store to grab another bottle and get take-away lunch at a small business, because your father doesn’t know enough to know that you’re  _ probably  _ grounded for at least a week and your mother’s out managing her stupid-ass shop. Then, you remain holed up in your room until your mother forces you to come out for dinner.

You eat in near silence. Your cereal from this morning is still on the table, because your mother didn’t want to throw it out in case you returned to finish it and your father is incapable of taking responsibility for chores. The only word your mother says to you during dinner is a mumble, while your father is in the bathroom and after Trip’s finished, that she’s sorry for being pushy (and she  _ should  _ be), and she won’t force you to talk about it until you’re ready.

“There’s nothing to talk  _ about,”  _ you snap back. “I almost had consensual sex, and then I didn’t because you walked in at a bad time and assumed the worst. We don’t  _ need  _ to talk about that.”

She opens her mouth to debate, then sighs and nods silently. You finish as quickly as you can and go back to your room.

Your name is Penny Carson, and you have  _ nothing  _ to talk about, because you’re  _ fine. _

* * *

Your name is Penny Carson, but you don’t feel like it’s  _ yours.  _ No part of you  _ belongs  _ to you anymore, it’s all  _ his.  _ You were  _ given  _ to him from the second you chose him as your prom date over your dad, you’re sure of it, and now you’re  _ his.  _ You don’t know if you  _ exist  _ as a person outside of him, if you ever did or you ever will, and the fact that your name was ever on his tongue makes you  _ desperate  _ to change it, to  _ anything  _ else.

You look at the clock in the corner of the too-bright screen of your phone. It’s five in the morning, and your heart is pounding. You just woke up, from a dream in which -- in which he was  _ touching  _ you, in ways you didn’t want, and you knew it was your fault because you never even told him to stop, but you couldn’t even move your mouth. You’re honestly not sure how to feel about it.

It takes longer than usual to unlock your phone. You’re shaking, for some reason. Must be the cold. 

You can’t see yourself getting back to sleep, and you don’t want your mother to know you’re awake, so you whittle away at the time, first by playing mobile games and then by checking social media. You wince. Peter’s written a  _ hell  _ of a rant, about how his girlfriend  _ nearly died  _ because of some  _ random shitty guy  _ that was brought to the prom by someone he  _ thought  _ was a friend. You type up an apologetic reply, and he tells you to fuck off and then blocks you. You can’t even  _ begin  _ to imagine what he’s doing up right now, but you can’t imagine what  _ you’re  _ doing up, either.

But, it’s  _ fine.  _ You  _ are  _ a teenage girl, after all. You lose your best friends all the time, and it’s  _ fine,  _ and it  _ totally  _ doesn’t tear a hole in your heart every time it happens. As a matter of fact, you don’t  _ care  _ that you just lost Maddy as a friend, probably more permanently than you’ve ever lost a friend before, and it’s nobody’s fault but yours, and BoJack’s getting the blame because your mother is an idiot.

So, you unfollow Maddy on every social media you have, but you don’t block her, just in case she wants to reach out to forgive you, and you only wince a little when you see your name in your username. You’re  _ sure  _ you can cope with losing Maddy. You can find another best friend,  _ easy.  _ You’re pretty sure Allison F. was sort of hinting that she wants to be your friend again anyway.

Your name is Penny Carson, and you don’t  _ need  _ friends at school, anyway, because you  _ almost  _ had BoJack, and what more could you  _ possibly  _ need?

* * *

Your name is Penny Carson, and you  _ do  _ have friends.

Allison F. was willing to come crawling back to you, thank God. You sit next to her during lunch on the first Monday after you return to school. The whole time, you can’t help but think about the elephant in the room, except it’s  _ not  _ an elephant in the room, because Allison doesn’t even know about it, and she doesn’t  _ need  _ to know because it’s  _ nothing.  _ Realy, it’s less of an elephant in the living room and more of a mouse in the kitchen. It’s utterly unremarkable.

Kids your age have sex all the time anyway.

You can’t help but wonder, though, if she noticed that you went to prom with a particularly cringe-worthy horse who looked at least twice your age. Your heart skips several beats every time your conversation drifts into the subject of prom, which is often, because Allison had a  _ great  _ time and it’s all she wants to talk about all lunch. You don’t have a  _ clue  _ what you’re going to say if she asks what was up with the horse, or why you left early, or what you did after you got home.

It’s not that you don’t  _ want  _ her to know. Well, you  _ don’t,  _ but only because you don’t particularly want  _ anyone  _ to hear about your sex life or lack thereof. It’s not like there’s anything  _ wrong  _ with it, really, because the age of consent is seventeen for a reason because  _ loads  _ of people have sex at your age and you’re probably one of hte last people in your year to lose your virginity. You just can’t help but worry that she’ll  _ think _ there’s something wrong with you, just like your stupid mother.

You don’t know  _ how  _ you could ever look Allison F. in the eyes again if you tell her, and if she then raises an eyebrow at you, and says, “What, so we had  _ one  _ fight, and you were so lonely you had sex with an adult?”

That’s not the reason. You  _ know  _ that’s not the reason. But you don’t know what the  _ actual  _ reason is, so you just hope and pray to God that she won’t ask. And, she doesn’t. Your lunch goes by as normal, and your skin only crawls a little more than usual when the weird fish guy from your PE class comes by to ask his usual invasive questions about your nonexistent sex life.

Yeah, that just  _ happens  _ here. High school is certainly something.

But, it’s  _ no big deal.  _ This is just part of being a teen, after all. If there’s one thing that you’ve learned from, like,  _ every teen drama ever,  _ it’s that teens are wild and crazy and  _ constantly  _ horny. These are supposed to be  _ the best years of your life,  _ full of wild parties and wild fun and wild sex, and that means you can’t be upset that people kind of cross a line when they ask if you’re still a virgin and you can’t even  _ begin  _ to be cautious of the part of your mind that wants to ask a fifty-year-old for sex, because you’re a horny teenager and this  _ should  _ be what you want.

So, your name is Penny Carson, and you can’t complain, because if you do you’re a prude, and if you were  _ normal,  _ you wouldn’t question it.

* * *

Your name is Penny Carson, and you can’t remember the last time things were  _ okay. _

It’s been a week since prom, but it  _ feels  _ so much longer. Everything just  _ drags,  _ just  _ drags on forever,  _ and your grades are slipping because you can’t  _ focus  _ on anything, and Peter and Maddy glare at you every time they pass you in the corridors, and --

\--and  _ something feels wrong. _

You continue to play the mobile game on your phone. It’s PE right now, and you haven’t slept in a week so you absolutely  _ can’t  _ take part, and no amount of nagging from the teacher will change your mind on that. Nobody  _ cares  _ about PE, anyway. It’s all so  _ stupid,  _ everything is so  _ fucking stupid,  _ and nothing matters,  _ nothing fucking matters anyway,  _ and you  _ know  _ that if you got onto the court to play basketball with them then there’s at least five boys that would just use it as an excuse to get weirdly close to you. 

Everything about that feels  _ wrong.  _ But it also feels wrong that you’re  _ not  _ letting them invade your personal space.  _ Everything  _ is  _ wrong  _ now, and you don’t know how to fix it. How do you make things right, when you don’t even know how you managed to make them so wrong?

So, you don’t bother trying. You live in a vacuum, so utterly and completely  _ isolated  _ from all your classmates, that you barely even notice when the teacher pauses the game for a quick drink break. Despite the sudden silence when the ball stops bouncing around the stadium, you dont think to look up until the weird fish guy sits next to you. “Hey.”

You glare. “Fuck off.”

“Woah! When did you get so rude?” He slides closer to you. “I’m just trying to be nice.”

“No, you’re trying to  _ pretend  _ we’re friends, so you can make me out to be the bad guy when I tell you to fuck off. But we both know that you’re only here to ask invasive questions about my sex life.”

“Well, what  _ is  _ your sex life like?” She crosses her arms uncomfortably. “Have you had sex with Diego yet?”

“Diego and I aren’t even a  _ thing!  _ We just said ‘hey’ to each other. That’s  _ it.”  _

“Oh, but you  _ love  _ him, don’t you? Do you think about him when you watch porn?” You stiffen. You’ve never  _ actually  _ watched porn yet -- you’ve had your fantasies, and the occaisional erotic fanfiction, but you’ve never  _ wanted  _ to actually watch it, and the fact that other teens downright  _ brag  _ about it makes you feel like maybe that’s something wrong with you. “What porn do you watch?”

You cringe. “What the  _ fuck  _ makes you think it’s okay to ask that?”

“I watch hentai.”

“I do  _ not  _ want to talk about porn.”

One of the weird fish guy’s friends sits down on your other side. He has a mullet completely unironically, and last lesson he snuck out of class for half of the period and when he returned he had an empty bottle of hand sanitizer and a giant dice for no adequately explained reason. “She watches  _ Pokemon  _ porn.”

“I  _ do  _ not! I don’t even think that’s a thing.” Or at least, you  _ hope  _ that’s a thing, but knowing the Internet you think it unfortunately probably is. Your brother’s into  _ Pokemon,  _ and a few months back you watched a video about it during lunch because you were trying to pick what to get for his birthday. The boy with the mullet saw it over your shoulder, made the completely bizarre and unfounded assumption that it was porn, and he hasn’t shut up since.

“Penny watches  _ Pokemon  _ porn!” says mullet-boy, unnecessarily loudly. Your skin crawls. If he gets any louder then your classmates will hear him, and you’ll just be  _ that girl that watches weird porn,  _ even though you  _ don’t,  _ because at some point in your life you made the grave mistake of hitting puberty and your existence outside of being horny and/or sexy just hasn’t been as noticeable since. 

So, you sit up straight. “Fuck off.”

Mullet-boy smirks at you. “Oh, does little Penny not want everyone to know watch  _ Pokemon  _ porn?”

You rise to your feet, standing over him.  _ “Fuck. Off.”  _

“Oh, the poor little --”

Your fist collides with his face, as hard as you can. He stumbles backward from the impact, and then stares at you in blunt shock. He can’t hit you back -- hitting a girl goes against his highly selective moral code, while sexual harassment apparently doesn’t. Behind you, the fish guy backs away in obvious fear.

They both leave you alone for the rest of the day. All you can do is hope to God that nobody tells a teacher.

* * *

You get home a few minutes later than usual -- you were walking slowly on purpose, and you also made a convenient stop to grab a desperately-needed coffee at  _ 7-11, But, Like, A Funny Animal Version.  _ When you open the door, you prepare to make a beeline to your room to dump your bag on the floor and spend the next several hours on your phone, but your mother’s waiting at the table for you.

“The school called.” She takes a sip from her coffee. You gulp, then sit down.

“A guy was being an ass so I punched him,” you say defensively.

“I know, they told me. I’m not mad.” She sure  _ sounds  _ mad, but she sounds mad when she isn’t a  _ lot  _ lately, so you don’t look too far into it. “That is  _ very  _ unlike you.”

“Yeah, well,” You cross your arms. “There’s a first time for everything.”

Your mother’s lips thin. She hesitates for a long time, staring into her coffee. “You know,” she says cautiously. “I think it’s possible that this is a manifestation of trauma.”

_ “Trauma?!”  _ you practically  _ spit  _ at her. “You -- you know what?  _ Stop.”  _ You stand up. “I’m not  _ traumatised.  _ I’m not a basket case. I’m not some fucking tragic fragile rape victim, because I  _ wasn’t  _ raped!” You throw up your hands in frustration. “Nothing even  _ happened.  _ And if something  _ had  _ happened, it would have been  _ fine,  _ because I gave consent.” 

“I know that! I know that!” She grimaces. “It’s just -- sometimes, when you’re young, you might give consent to something you’re not really  _ ready  _ for, or you might  _ think  _ you’re ready when you’re not. That’s why we have age of consent laws --”

“Under which I am  _ old enough  _ to know what I’m ready for!”

“In New Mexico! Some states have it higher. Because, really, there’s no one single age where you’re  _ ready,  _ is there? You don’t  _ wake up  _ on your seventeenth birthday just  _ suddenly  _ knowing everything about safe sex.” She pinches the bridge of her snout. “And, and even if you  _ are  _ ready, well -- he was an  _ adult!” _

“Oh, for God’s sake.” You smack yourself in the forehead. “I’m  _ so  _ close to being an adult! It’s not like people just  _ wake up  _ on their eighteenth birthday and  _ suddenly  _ have power over minors!” You cross your arms stubbornly. “Diego’s a month older than me. If he asked me out, and then turned eighteen before I did, would  _ that  _ be an unhealthy power dynamic?”

“This isn’t  _ about  _ an eighteen-year-old! This is about a  _ fifty-one  _ year old. Do you have any  _ idea  _ how big of a gap that is?!” She stands up. “Don’t you think it’s kind of  _ weird  _ that nobody in his age group wanted him?”

“He had  _ plenty  _ of girlfriends in his age group!”  _ And all of them dumped him,  _ you don’t add.

“Then what did he even  _ want  _ with you? Shouldn’t he think of you as, as just some little kid?”

“But he  _ didn’t!”  _ You stamp down in frustration.  _ “Everyone  _ thinks of me like that, but  _ he  _ doesn’t!”

“And he  _ should!”  _ She groans. “BoJack hasn’t been seventeen for  _ thirty-four years.  _ He  _ should  _ have matured since then! At least a little! I mean, you think freshman are pretty childish and annoying, don’t you?”

“They’re  _ kids!” _

“And so are you!”

“Oh, so  _ that’s  _ what I am, is it?” You cross your arms and glare, absolutely  _ daring  _ her to respond. “Just some  _ stupid little kid?  _ Some little kid that doesn’t know what sex is?”

_ “Yes!”  _ She runs a hand through her own hair in frustration.  _ “That  _ is how most adults think of you. And that’s a  _ good  _ thing, because it means  _ most  _ of them won’t take advantage of you!”

“He didn’t  _ take advantage of me!  _ In fact, he --” Your voice breaks. You can never forgive yourself for it. “He was the only one who  _ wanted  _ me.”

Your mother’s features soften. “Penny…”

“What? It’s  _ true!”  _ You sniff. “I’m not popular at school. I have a new best friend every three weeks. Diego didn’t actually like me.” You turn away from her, trying hard to regulate your breathing. “BoJack was the only person who thought I was  _ desirable,  _ and if that makes him a -- a  _ pedophile,  _ then, well, I guess I’m a pedophile apologist.”

“Penny--” Her voice is sharper now. You try to storm out of the room but she grabs your shoulder. “BoJack isn’t the only person who’s going to love you.”

“Then where are all those other people, huh?” You turn to face her, glaring. “There are  _ hundreds  _ of people in my high school, and  _ none  _ of them find me sexually appealing.  _ None  _ of them! They treat my sex life like a  _ joke,  _ like nothing could  _ ever  _ happen. And -- and they’re  _ right.”  _ You sniffle. “They’re right.”

You avoid eye contact. Your mother stares down at you, frowning deeply. “Penny…”

Your father walks into the room. “Hey, I’m going to the shop to buy red food colouring, do we need anything else?”

You get emotional whiplash from the abrupt change in conversation and physical whiplash from how quickly you turn to face him. Your mother gestures for him to shut up, then turns back to you. “There are other fish in the sea--”

“Even  _ fish  _ hate me!” you yell, frustration at an absolute peak, pushing her away from you. “And when I stand up to them, they’re  _ afraid  _ of me! This is all I am!” You turn your back to her.  _ “Pedophiles  _ want me! And fish  _ fear  _ me! I  _ hate  _ being underage!” You throw up your hands in frustration. “I hate  _ everything!  _ I want to die.”

Your mother flinches. “You don’t want to --”

“I  _ do!  _ You don’t know what  _ I  _ want. You know what?” You back away from her, glaring. “I’m going to  _ die,  _ and then I’m going to leave  _ tapes,  _ so everyone feels  _ guilty  _ for not stopping me!  _ Tapes,  _ mom,  _ tapes!  _ Thirteen of them!” You turn to leave, then turn back. “But BoJack is  _ nothing  _ like Bryce!”

Your father frowns. “Isn’t Bryce the Ice-type gym leader from that game Trip likes?”

“People make  _ porn  _ of that game, dad!” And with that, you storm off to your room, slamming the door behind you. The door shakes dangerously with the impact, in a way that sort of gives you the sense that if you make this a habit it’s bound to fall off the hinges soon, and you lean against it. You’re shaking, too. 

Your name is Penny Carson, and you don’t know how to fix the door. You don’t know how to fix anything. The only person who you think could give you any sense of closure is BoJack, and he’s made things so wrong he can never come back.

Your name is Penny Carson, and you’re hiding in your room. 

You expect that it’s only going to be a few minutes of cooling down before your mother knocks on your bedroom door, but she actually waits a little over an hour. You whittle away at that time on your phone, watching funny videos in an attempt to cheer yourself up, because there’s no social media that you can watch painlessly now. You’re halfway through a satire on how people are completely unable to react appropriately when told their friend doesn’t know how to swim when your door gently opens and your mother sticks her head in. “Pizza?”

You look up. “Hmm?”

“We’re getting pizza. For dinner. Pepperoni?” She manages to force a small smile. You stare at her quizzically.

This is almost certainly a choice, a very deliberate choice. Normally, your family eats meals together, at the table, but pizza is the one dinner food that you can get away with taking to your room. It’s because Trip  _ will  _ eat it in his room, no matter how hard anyone tries to talk him out of it, because he’s a  _ slob,  _ and your mother thinks it’s unfair if you’re physically closer to the pizza than he is because you two  _ always  _ end up in a race to get the last slice. The winner gets marginally more pizza, but the loser has a chance of getting chocolate as compensation for their loss if they can give your father their best puppy-dog eyes. It’s wholesome, and hilarious, and  _ fun. _

And, it shows that she wants to give you a chance to be alone tonight.

You clear your throat awkwardly. “Yeah.” You grin. “Pepperoni.”

She nods and closes the door behind her. It’s still a little wonky, a little close to falling off the hinges. She hasn’t fixed it. But she  _ has  _ began to make you feel like maybe it’s okay if things are a little broken. Maybe, if you give it enough time, it’ll start to fix itself.

* * *

Your name is Penny Carson, and by some curious coincidence, you think the word ‘penny’ almost  _ exactly  _ corresponds to how much money you’d have if you got a dollar for every hour of sleep you got.

You stare at the ceiling,  _ again,  _ then realise that that isn’t helping, and pull the pillow over your eyes. It doesn’t help either, but the fabric feels kind of nice on your fur, so that’s something. You toss and turn, alternating between forcing your eyes shut and staring at various point on the wall, trying to think of some dumb teen drama to distract you into falling alseep, but no matter what, your thoughts always drift back to  _ him. _

Because, you have to admit, your mother made a good point in that argument. Namely, that even if BoJack’s not necessarily a  _ pedophile,  _ well, there’s something a little  _ weird  _ about being fifty-one and still wanting to have sex with teenagers, and maybe you  _ weren’t  _ as ready as you thought you were and maybe if you couldn’t recognize that then he should have, and even if it’s hard to think of yourself as a victim it’s impossible not to admit that the whoel thing with Maddy was honestly fucked up.

The thing is that, now you’ve thought yourself into a corner. Because you  _ can’t  _ think of him that way. There are two BoJacks to you -- the nice, funny friend of mom’s that was the only adult to treat you like an equal, and the weird guy with the boat, the one who abandoned Maddy at the hospital and tried to seduce a teen and apparently did something bad to Herb Kazzaz. You can’t reconcile the two versions of him in your mind.

And, for every thought you can have about how he  _ shouldn’t  _ have done something, there are a million excuses for him, a million reasons why it wasn’t  _ that  _ bad and you’re just trying to make him out to be the bad guy and you should really get over himself.

Because, well,  _ was  _ it kind of weird that he inserted himself into your life for a good two months just to run from his own problems? Well,  _ yes,  _ it  _ was,  _ but what else was he meant to do? He  _ needed  _ an escape from L.A. You don’t know if he  _ had  _ anywhere else to go.

And, yeah,  _ was  _ it a little weird in hindsight that he so eagerly volunteered to take a teenager to prom, a teenager who he could  _ probably  _ tell had a bit of a crush on him even though he acted oblivious, when your father was readily available? Well,  _ yes,  _ but it wasn’t  _ weird- _ weird, it was just --  _ weird.  _ Weird as in, he must have a  _ lot  _ of time on his hands, not weird as in, he  _ liked  _ you.

And, well,  _ was  _ it borderline neglectful to give Maddy more alcohol and then abandon her at the hospital when that caused problems?  _ Yes,  _ but, you don’t  _ blame  _ him, because he was in position to end up in a  _ lot  _ of trouble if the authorities found out he was responsible for that, possibly even to the point of getting  _ arrested,  _ and you abandoned her too, so really, do you have any room to talk?

And, is it kind of creepy and fucked up and  _ pedophilic  _ that he wanted to fuck a teen? Well, yes,  _ but… _

But you  _ feel  _ like it must be your fault somehow.

* * *

After yet  _ another  _ hellish, sleepless night, you swallow down an ibuprofen that tastes too strongly of the large drop of hand sanitizer you rubbed into your fur before taking it. Your head is still pounding, so you watch TV for a while as you wait for it to kick in. There’s nothing good on. It’s a Saturday morning, so Trip is insisting on watching the  _ Pokemon  _ anime, and no amount of pointing out that he  _ should  _ be too old for it will persuade him to change the channel. You’re a little tempted to steal the remote, but your mother would probably take his side because watching cartoon animals being trapped in balls is part of his  _ morning routine,  _ and you’re rarely up this early anyway, and you don’t even know what you  _ want  _ to watch.

As predicted, Ash does something stupid and the girl with purple hair calls him a kid. You don’t understand why that’s an insult. He  _ is  _ a kid, and so’s she, and it seems a little  _ dumb  _ to throw around immaturity as an insult when they’re both around ten years old. 

Besides, there’s nothing  _ wrong  _ with being young.

When your mother walks into the living room, she’s holding a large cupcake with a bite taken out of it -- chocolate-y brown, with a generous helping of bright red icing that was clearly made with far too much food colouring. You raise an eyebrow at her. “Dad made cake?”

“Mm-hmm,” she answers, in between bites. “There’s still some in the kitchen if you’re hungry.”

You stand up, grinning. “You’re letting me eat cake for breakfast?”

“Better than not eating breakfast at all.” She ruffles your hair. “You have to have a healthy lunch to make up for it, though.”

“Yeah, I think I can live with that.” You go through to the kitchen, where there’s a few cupcakes on a tray, and go ahead and bite into the biggest one. After finishing it you realise that the one that  _ looked  _ the biggest was actually just the one with the most comically large amount of icing, so you have another, and that’s about as much as you can handle, but there’s still some left so you doubt you’re  _ actually  _ having a healthy lunch.

Or, maybe you will anyway. Today feels like a good day. And, the cupcakes  _ barely  _ taste like hand sanitizer.

You frown.

“Hey, mom?”

She turns to face you. “Yeah?”

“I, uh…” You take a deep breath. It’s not exactly  _ easy  _ to say it out loud, even if it’s been the only thing on your mind for  _ ages.  _ “You know, uh, lately I’ve been kind of thinking of, um, of going to therapy.” 

“...Oh.” Her eyes widen. 

You force a grin. “I mean, we don’t  _ have  _ to, it’s just --”

“No, no, I’m not  _ against  _ it, I just --” She pauses, gesturing vaguely, and then smiles uneasily. “I thought  _ I  _ would have to be talking  _ you  _ into it.”

You rub the back of your neck nervously. “...Yeah…”

“You know, deciding to reach out for help is a  _ really  _ big step.” She runs a hand through your hair. “I’m proud of you.”

“Mom, you’re embarrassing me!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll stop.” She grins. “I’ll work out an appointment for you, okay?”

You smile. “...Okay.”


End file.
